Chinese HTC One variant features removable back cover, dual-SIMs, and microSD slot

While the goal of the HTC One is to bring a global device experience and marketing strategy, it looks like the phone won’t be identical in every region it touches. China, at least, will see a device that, while the same appearance-wise, features a slightly different arrangement under the hood.

It starts with the fact that users can actually get under that hood. Yes, the WCDMA version of the phone headed to China Unicom (model number 802w) features a removable backplate. This is useful for gaining access to the phone’s dual-SIM ports as well as its (gasp) microSD card slot. Sounds like HTC was willing to sacrifice seamless construction in order to provide a feature (dual-SIM support) that is highly desired in China. But throwing in the microSD reader is icing on the cake.

And that microSD reader is the main reason why this version of the phone is worthy of having attention called to it. There is still a pretty hot debate over the necessity of removable storage on Android devices. Some users don’t miss it. Some won’t buy a phone that doesn’t feature the option. So are we disappointed that HTC didn’t include on the feature on all versions of the phone?

This Is our carriers effing us over. If I was on gsm I’d import it. That’s wild.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107214144202094295079/posts James

This was a design decision on HTC”s part. What does it have to do with carriers?

blest

Well because our carriers want us paying for more data.. Which would mean less space on our phones… Which means no removable sd cards to store our media.. Which means everything in cloud.. Which means more data.. Which means HTC couldn’t give us sd slots even if they wanted to.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107214144202094295079/posts James

I hope you know how ridiculous that sounds. Samsung, Sony, and LG would like a word with you. It’s a design decision, nothing more and nothing less. Don’t you think the Chinese carriers want money just as bad as the rest of the world’s carriers?

blest

Man you need to get up with some research of your own. Foh if you think I’m arguing with you about something this obvious. Especially when it comes to att and verizon. Bother someone else.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107214144202094295079/posts James

The One is a global device deploying on carriers all over the world. The same model without MicroSD is deploying world wide, even in countries with cheap unlimited data. What does that have to do with ATT and Verizon?

blest

Already told you buzz off and talk to someone else. When att gets it.. There will be no sd slot.. When verizon gets it… No sd slot. Hence why I said I’d import…. And what it has to do with us carriers.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107214144202094295079/posts James

What part of ‘When the rest of the world gets it, there will be no SD slot’ do you not understand? It has nothing to do with ATT and Verizon. There is a world outside of the United States.

blest

Are you retarded? I don’t care about the rest of the world. I said me, myself, I’m importing. Gtfoh.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107214144202094295079/posts James

I don’t care if you’re importing or not. You made a claim that HTC’s design decision to not include a MicroSD slot was influence by ATT and Verizon, and that’s ridiculous.

iwave

If, as you claim, design decisions aren’t influenced by deals with the carriers, why is the 64gb version exclusive to AT&T in the US?

blest

He won’t answer that. Because as stated.. He’s retarded.

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

ummm probably because ATT is paying more for that version, and its not going to be exclusive forever, theres a period of exclusivity that goes to the carrier if u havent figured that out yet. yall both need to do your research and stfu n stop clowning on the guy proving a simple point.

i’d say your brain is hurting more than mine atm, simply because instead of saying things applicable to the conversation, u just spew insults, typical of an uninformed moron. carry on.

iwave

HTC’s customers aren’t phone users. Their customers are the companies who sell the phones to users. They develop phones to the specifications that their customers want.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107214144202094295079/posts James

I don’t see how the amount of memory on board the phone influence the design.

bmg314

US carriers probably have more pull on oem design decisions than the rest of the world. No I don’t have data handy to back that up, but if you think about it, you will know it to be likely. Hint: money plays a large part.

PhoenixPath

“and that’s ridiculous.”

How so?

There are carrier specific versions of nearly every device available. Even more so 3 years ago… remember the Galaxy S? Not a single US carrier had the “international” version. Every single one of them had it modified in some fashion.

One could just as easily ask incredulously: Since when do US carrier *not* influence the smartphones they carry.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107214144202094295079/posts James

This Chinese variant is the only other variant of the phone announced. They’re not doing what Samsung did with the S and S2. You make a good point though.

PhoenixPath

It does seem to be getting better in terms of the ridiculous number of versions. I still dislike the US’s recent penchant to not include SDcard slots…

M0nk

If the carriers required a MicroSD slot, for shure the One would have one because HTC is not Apple or Samsung (in size/power) and “listen” to the carriers. Only “some” users like us care about removable storage…

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

ok maybe it should be broken down into elementary terms that u can understand….U MADE IT A POINT TO SAY THAT ITS THE CARRIERS FAULT WHEN IN REALITY, ITS ACTUALLY YOUR FAULT THE ONE ISNT GETTING AN SD CARD SLOT IN THE US…BECAUSE U WHINE AND CRY LIKE A LITTLE GIRL U RUINED IT FOR EVERYBODY ELSE…OH AND HTC JUST SENT ME AN EMAIL SAYING THEY FORBID THE IMPORT GOING TO U, BUT OTHER PEOPLE CAN IMPORT…there, hows that for jackassery! have a nice day douche! >:)

http://www.facebook.com/kodjo.mentor.7 Kodjo Mentor

ty for using caps , now i dont need to go get my glasses ..pfft srsly ?

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

you are quite welcome Rtard

http://www.facebook.com/kodjo.mentor.7 Kodjo Mentor

mama said to ignore noobs so i hereby ignore you

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

wow, excellent comeback, must have gotten that one from ur little brother huh? loser

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

the dude whose trolling u is upvoting his own comments lmao, what a fail. anyway i agree with everything u say, but u cant expect everyone to have common sense man, know wut i b talkin bout?!

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

dude u make urself look dumber than a box of rocks with every comment u post, stop trollin and grow up.

blest

Really? I’m sorry some of you guys are a little bit slow and can’t put situations together. Guess I’m just a dumb guy. Sorry.

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

well the last part of your comment is the only correct thing you have said all thread long. good job

blest

So you’re third in a long lineage of slow people huh? I guess everyone that agrees with me are trolling too lol. Have a good one.

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

your words are so predictable its laughable, u get mad when someone counters u and doesn’t agree with you, and so you go on the offensive and call names n such, how childish and amusing. get a life u lame.

blest

Lol sure ya right. Now that you’ve solved the problem. Mosey along

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

smh, i feel sorry for u, maybe ur mom shouldve swallowed u instead of letting you swim upstream, if she had, then the world would be with one less idiot. sorry for your family.

blest

Lmao. That has to be one of the oldest and most lame comebacks ever. Used over and over and never funny. Come with better insults or go home.

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

really, cuz i could care less how many times its been used, my point got across to u obviously, and so my next advice to u is to go off yourself and do what ur mom shoulda done a long time ago. nobody will miss u i promise! :)

blest

Go harder than that.

http://twitter.com/MRND384 Nieves Diaz III

u really should get a life bro, seriously

Guest

s’you

M0nk

Most people in China, like in the rest of the world, use prepaid plans and get their phone from other place. That´s why they use dual-sim phones, to call people on the same carrier at no cost. Carriers in some countries are just “dumb pipes” and the government have a strict control over them.

saraannbrewin

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irtechneo

Carriers most certainly play a part in what features come to their phones. Verizon disabled the wireless charging on the note 2 so they could (in my opinion) use that as an exclusive feature for their flagship “Droid” DNA.

why is everybody down voting this guys comment, its true…geez man grow tf up

Brian S.

So the main question is: Can we buy this from someone in China and use it here in the US?

blest

Exactly what I’ve been wondering..

Brian S.

I think to do our part sticking it to the man we should find out, spread the word, and do what we can to make these as easily accessible as possible.

ThaSik1

Gotta say it does hurt a tid bit to see there is a variant of THE beastly phone to have (right now) with an mSD slot. But they develop products according to carrier wants, so I believe the fault with our variants lies with the carriers. HTC doesn’t have much to bargain with since they aren’t big hitters like Sammy/Apple atm. Could be wrong tho lol

Vytautas Petrauskas

I personaly don’t care that much about this whole MicroSD thing when there is 64 GB of storage. I can’t imagine what people do with phones if 64 GB is not enought.

blest

Things you don’t lol.

Fahim Yaqoob

a phone needs 32gb , but a tablet needs as much memory as it can get

PhoenixPath

“I can’t imagine…”

Exactly. Other people, however, do not appear to suffer that limitation.

eli

with all the cloud service options that are available, I really dont get what the fuss is about expandable device memory anymore. Sure theres pretty of times you may not be able to access the cloud, but are you buying this to be used as a PHONE or to replace the need of tablets/laptops/etc?

PhoenixPath

Personally?

On my drive to and from work, I lose signal at least 3 times. Google Play Music nor Pandora can get through the drive without dropping out at least twice.

Storage is cheap, and as you said, there are plenty of times you may not have access to the internet.

More storage: Zero failure, low cost

Internet dependant: Dependable failure, high cost (data usage)

…so the real question is: Why the heck *isn’t* the storage on there?

The internet is great for sync/check-out set-ups, but is not quite there in regards to mobile streaming at this point. I would love to be able to sync my device to Google Play (currently only syncs in *ONE* direction: it’s not even a true “sync”, as that would involve both upstream and downstream). I would rather not be dependent on it’s availability in order to access my content however.

http://twitter.com/Caffinatedone Frank Hirtz

Sure, but the question wasn’t “should one have local storage on the device”, it was “why would someone normally need more than 64G”. If you need 15,000+ songs locally on your device to cover your commute, then you need a shorter commute.

PhoenixPath

So I need to limit the pool of music my drive-time commute can pull from….why, exactly?

You suggestion implies only a portion of my library should be available to me at any given time. Why? …because you like streaming? What valid rationale is there for that?

Again: Storage is cheap and dependable. Cellular data is neither.

I see a lot of people asking me to validate my reasoning as to why on-board storage beats out “the cloud”…but no-one seems to be doing the opposite.

In what bizzaro world does “intermittent and expensive” beat out “always available and cheap”??? (and why the heck are people not only so incredibly accepting of this, but actually to the point of denigrating those who oppose it??)

bmg314

Thank you!!

http://twitter.com/Caffinatedone Frank Hirtz

I’m not intending to denigrate anyone here, I’m trying to figure out why someone who’d primarily be using the phone’s memory for music storage would have concerns with just having 64G available.

I get that the cellular internet is expensive and unreliable, and wouldn’t argue otherwise, it’s just that I can’t see how 64G is really some sort of impediment for such a user. I wouldn’t normally post, but every time I see a phone announcement about one that doesn’t have an SDcard, there’s the inevitable chorus of posts about how terrible that is, and for how a phone is typically used, I never really understood that. If you need to keep/watch full rez movies or something on it, I could see how that might be an issue, but outside of that, media usually isn’t very large relative to the available onboard storage.

roberthenderson

I have a 32gb gs3 with a64gb card and between a few movies, games, other apps, photos/videos shot, and music, it’s easy to use 64gb. The point is convenience, if I want to keep a lot on my phone, I can without worrying about metering out storage. I would not put anything past carriers when it comes to bleeding people for more money. Every move they make us to maximize profits. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a bit of a fool.

PhoenixPath

” I’m trying to figure out why someone who’d primarily be using the phone’s memory for music storage would have concerns with just having 64G available.”

Is it really that hard for you to imagine that someone might have more than 64GB of music??

“every time I see a phone announcement about one that doesn’t have an SDcard, there’s the inevitable chorus of posts about how terrible that is”

Because it is. What possible valid rationale is there for *not* including it? I don’t care that people have alternatives and solutions. It misses the point completely. It was functionality we had that was less expensive, and more dependable and reliable than any functionality they would have us use instead.

M0nk

Apart from the reality that most “cloud” services are not available outside US, the 64G phone option is too expensive for most users outside US. Usually the 32GB version is $100 more and the 64GB version ~$200 more and many times the options are not even available in your carrier/country.

A 64GB mSD class-10 card costs less than $50 and its “free” if you already have one card full of data in your current phone.

No_Nickname90

OK. So unless you have like truckloads of music, that shouldn’t be a problem. I download my playlist. At one point I wasn’t downloading my playlist. You see, Google Music would download like 3 songs in advance. Also if you have save cache on, then it would save the music, so even at the end of the day when I’m leaving some of the same songs would already be downloaded. It’s not that extreme. Yes, there were times where I would choose a song that wasn’t downloaded and it would take like 1-3 minutes to start the song. That’s why I started downloading my playlist.

One thing I refuse to do is stream my videos. I was trying to do that with Dropbox and Sprint sux. The video kept lagging and everything. So of course I’d prefer my videos to be on my phone.

PhoenixPath

Sure. Limiting my selection to a playlist is an option.

There are likely all kinds of ways I could have access to my music whenever I want it. People sure seem to like giving me all kinds of suggestions to that end…

…but not a single person has bothered to explain why their way would be better than simply having enough storage.

irtechneo

I agree with you on this one. I will say however getting a new car fixed that problem for me. It has Ford’s Sync system which contains a USB drive. I have a 32 gb drive loaded with most of my music and it is all voice activated. With that being said having an sd card is still a must for me. I take a lot of photos and videos and not to mention just keeping a few hd movies on my phone as well. I only have 2gb of data per month with verizon and that doesnt last too far if you start adding in streaming from the cloud. The DNA was a really sexy device but with only 16 on board and 11 gb of that actually available there is not much room for anything else (especially after one or two big games to actually use that hd screen). Simply having the sd card would have made that phone much more desirable. Same goes for the HTC One. Now I could most certainly live with 64 gb on the phone and no sd card but that is only on ATT. I really want to love you HTC but you make it so hard….

No_Nickname90

I never said the method I do is better. Its a preference. The main reason why I use Google Music is because when I change ROMs, I don’t have to remake ALL my playlist. Notice how I also said that I refuse to stream my videos. Those are just too large to rely on Sprint’s network. Granted, I do have WiMax for my 4G and that is most likely the cause as well. Seeing as when that drops, there is a pause before the 3G kicks in.

The reason why I’m giving suggestions is because if you want the phone, but don’t know how to sacrifice. I still want the HTC One, even though I’ll have to get the 32GB version. So I’m going to have to sadly invest in more cloud storage for my videos. Also I’m going to need a 1TB hard drive. It’s time for one anyways. Sacrifices must be made. Hopefully Sprint’s LTE will be suitable, because WiMax sure isn’t.

PhoenixPath

“Sacrifices must be made.”

I wholeheartedly disagree. :)

DYNK

^THIS^

M0nk

Sorry to tell you that robust 3G and most cloud services are not fully available outside US and some lucky UE countries (Google Play movies/music, Pandora, Hulu, etc), so if you happen to be one of the other 6 billons in this world you will care…

eli

If you need more than 64GB on your PHONE than theres a problem…with you buying this device. Theres plenty of other options out there if your not with HTCs decision.

No_Nickname90

The 64GB is on AT&T only, though. So if you’re on AT&T, then you’re lucky.

bmg314

More movies, more games, more music. Easy.

iwave

Yes, we’re disappointed, although a replaceable battery would be of more interest to me than a micro sd card slot on a 32/64gb device. I’d be lining up to buy this if it had a removable battery. The dual sim would be handy, too.

No_Nickname90

Yes. Mainly because the 64GB variant is on AT&T only. I have a total of 48GB 16GB + 32GB external. So I was looking forward to getting the 64GB. It’s quite sad actually. I was actually planning on getting the phone.

Looks like HTC lost a customer.

bluevoodo

Whoa boy! Let the bitching begin.

disqus_Xl8jgOwKyc

i didnt care much, until i recently installed the new htc one x (international) update 3.19.709.2.. and BOOMMM!! al my personal data, apps, pictures everything was erased. That wouldnt have happened if it had an sdcard

NIGHTSCOUT

Exactly. Or if you dunk your phone in the toilet/ocean, you can extract data from SD card. Not from on board memory.

http://www.facebook.com/davidalanbrand David Brand

nice, but the option doesnt matter. The 32GB version of the ONE has all the space one would ever need .

iwave

Why am I not surprised that you refer to yourself in the third person??

Rdfry

Yeah and we are being charged too much for this on board memory that you can purchase cheaper yourself.

blisterpeanuts

Dude, speak for yourself. Where does my 60+ gigs of music fit into this picture? When I’m on a plane or away from a data connection? So, I should just do without my music when not in a hotspot or (expensive and metered) data network? How does that represent “choice”. As rdfry says, memory is dirt cheap these days; let the consumer pay $20 for 32 gig cards and stop gouging us.

tbonefsg

poor decision by HTC not top have these features in the US. they will be out of business in a few years and because of things like this I won’t miss them

blisterpeanuts

Really nice–is it possible to order one in the U.S.?
As for removable storage–Have been using a Nexus S, followed by a Galaxy Nexus, for the past year and it’s simply not for me. The “cloud” becomes very slow and expensive after the first 2 gigs of data are used up, which happens very fast. Seriously, Google? You think I should stream all of my paid-for music tracks from some server, every time I want to listen to it? Please, just give me 32 gigs of memory plus 64 gigs MicroSD and I’ll carry all my music around, thank you very much!

vperl

I would pay premium price to get phone with these features, but of all places CHINA gets it. Removable battery would make it a done deal. I would gladly pay for what I got.